[IDEA] x5 Damage/Hit Points and Titanium System Casing

[thereaverofdarkness]

I've been working on ideas for a major expansion to FTL for quite some time now and I've got a lot of ideas I think would greatly improve the game. Most of it is centered around adding small and large ship classes (interceptors and battleships) in this thread: http://subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=30358, but one idea is to multiply ship/system hit points and most damage sources by 5, then multiply beam damage only by 2 but let them hit every room plus every square. For example, the beam enters a new room, and it hits twice, once for the new room and once for the new square. If the beam hits another square in the same room, it gets another hit. A 2x2 room can be hit a max of 4 times with one beam. This way you can opt to focus extra beam damage in one room to take out a system, or you can alternatively try to hit as many rooms as possible to max out your hull damage. I've run some scenarios, and I find the net total beam damage you can get is about the same. The big advantage to beams this way is that they now pierce shields better (which is great because their description says they pierce shields, while only 3 out of 8 actually do), and the big disadvantage is that you'll often deal only partial damage to a system--since the x5 hit points means each system bar has 5 hit points, if you deal 1-4 damage to that bar, it will remain damaged but the bar can remain powered and functioning until the fifth damage point is dealt.


But this gets really fun when it comes to Rock Hull Plating and Titanium System Casing. I would change them such that instead of having a chance of protecting your ship, every hit simply has its damage reduced by 1. This makes the Titanium System Casing extremely valuable to your stealth cruiser, because when that laser shot hits your weapons, cloak, or other important system, it only deals 4 system damage and thus the system remains operational. You still really want shields, but it makes starting out with the stealth cruisers much less dependent on RNG. I'd also give titanium system casing to the stealth B because otherwise its first combat drone enemy is going to destroy it and it won't be the player's fault in any way.

That glaive beam is going to pierce enemies' shields better, but it's not as good as you might think. Its 6 base damage against one shield bubble: it'll do 5 damage per room/square. If you hit a 2x2 room, you can do 20 damage (4 bars) to that room, but any 1x2 room you can't hit for more than 3 bars of damage. When you try it, you'll find that the arrangements getting you those 3 hits per room are hitting fewer rooms than with the optimal beam hit in vanilla FTL. If they have 2 shield bubbles, you'll do 4 damage per hit, so 3 hits in a room deals 12 damage to it and only takes out 2 bars. All in all, it'll be better against enemies with more shields, but worse than before against enemies with less shields.


Rock Hull Plating and Titanium System Casing would also do well against beam weapons, especially if you have some shields. With one shield bubble and titanium system casing, a mini-beam, pike beam, or hull beam (2 base damage) would deal no damage at all to your systems, or with rock hull plating they would deal no damage to your hull.

While I'm discussing my changes to these systems, I might as well add: they would both reduce asteroid damage by 5, so TSC would make your systems immune to asteroids and RHP would make your hull immune to them. This is fitting with the text events in which rock hull plating supposedly makes asteroid fields safe.